Northumbria Police Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, the bighearted battle-ax anchoring Ann Cleeves's much-loved Vera Stanhope books, returns in The Dark Wives, the series' satisfying-on-all-levels 11th title. The novel finds the detective racked with guilt following the on-the-job death of a subordinate colleague and seriously considering something radical for her: self-improvement.
Answering a 999 call, Vera arrives at Rosebank, which Chloe Spence, one of its young residents, describes in her diary as a home "for the teenage kids nobody wants." A dog walker has found the hammer-bludgeoned body of Josh Woodburn, a temporary Rosebank worker, on the common near the home. As for Chloe, she hasn't been seen since Josh died. This would seem to make her the prime suspect--surely the timing of her disappearance isn't coincidental--but Vera resists drawing this conclusion because of what she reads in Chloe's left-behind diary.
Cleeves (The Rising Tide) has mastered the prolonged suspenseful ending, this one playing out at the Witch Hunt, an annual village tradition that the frivolity-averse Vera thinks of as "a kind of glorified game of hide-and-seek." Detective Sergeant Joe Ashworth, who knows his "control freak" boss better than anyone, finds his competitive muscles flexed by a conspicuously ambitious (that's a Vera no-no) new detective constable. Joe wonders how long the newbie will last on their team; as for how long the getting-on-in-years Vera will, her resolve to do better--"She'd decided, hadn't she, to be more communicative with the team, more collaborative?"--gives readers hope that she won't be retiring anytime soon. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer